Donna Herring, the former Camden real estate agent who masterminded an infamous fake will, said in recent court filings that there’s more to the story than has been reported.
Herring, who pleaded guilty in January to a federal charge in connection with a scheme to create a fake will for Matthew Seth Jacobs, said in a court filing that she loved him like a son.
Jacobs survived the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in 2010 and had received sizable settlements before he died at 34 in a one-car accident in January 2015.
Her “conduct was abhorrent,” defense attorney Erin Cassinelli of Little Rock said in a 22-page filing. “However, the Court should take into consideration that at the time of the offense, Ms. Herring was grieving the loss of someone she loved very much and was not thinking clearly.”
Herring thought she was doing what Jacobs would have wanted, “however misguided and reprehensible her efforts actually were,” Cassinelli wrote. “She has been villainized by the media and many in the community — she did not have anything to do with Matt’s death.”
In her filing in U.S. District Court in El Dorado, Herring said that Jacobs had talked about his intentions to make sure her daughter, Jordan Alexandra Peterson, now 23, was “taken care of” should anything happen to him. She said Peterson and Jacobs were planning to marry in 2016.
Herring said that Jacobs had been preparing a will that directed the bulk of his estate go to Peterson. And Herring said that Jacobs wanted to leave his only child, Jordan Jacobs, a college fund. (Herring included 40 exhibits in her filing to support her side of the story.)
But without an original will, Herring set out to create a fake will — she referred to it as a copy — until the original could be found. Without a will, Jacobs’ son, who was 17 when his father died, would have inherited the entire estate worth about $1.7 million. The will Herring created left him $50,000 and, before the fraud was discovered, he received an additional $250,000 in a settlement with Peterson.
“Despite the government’s insistence and efforts to disprove the existence of the will, it did exist, it was executed, and it did leave the majority of the estate to Alex — but was never found,” Herring said in the filing.
Herring “has great remorse for her conduct,” Cassinelli said in the filing. “It has tainted the memory of a man she loved dearly, has ruined her daughter’s life, and has caused immeasurable suffering for two families.”
Peterson and Herring’s sister and brother-in-law, Marion “Diane” Kinley and John Wayne Kinley Jr., also pleaded guilty in connection with their roles in the case. They have not been sentenced yet.
Herring has asked for a sentencing range of between 33 and 41 months in federal prison.
A sentencing date hasn’t been set.
Government’s Take
The U.S. attorney’s office had a different take on the story. Assistant U.S. Attorney Candace Taylor said that when Herring was first interviewed in July 2016, she denied knowing the will was fake.
Later, however, Herring acknowledged knowing that it was a fraud. Still, Herring told investigators that after Jacobs’ death she found a draft of his will that left everything to her daughter.
“Herring claimed that she created the fraudulent will so that [Jacobs’ son] wouldn’t be left completely out,” the filing said.
The bottom line is Herring and her co-conspirators swindled $1.3 million from Jacobs’ son, the filing said.
“While Herring’s actions are thievery at its most basic, they were such that it victimized Jacobs’ son by more than just stealing money,” Taylor wrote in the filing. “By forging a will that more or less left out the son and rightful heir, Herring made a son doubt his father’s love and caused a family profound pain.”
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